12/25/2009
• godlikeproductions.com
Yesterday, David discussed the CBO's miscalculation regarding the Senate health care bill. Democrats had been insisting that bill somehow cut the deficit and strengthened Medicare, but as it turns out the CBO had to clarify that the savings of the bill were being double counted. The "savings" the bill produces either have to be applied toward the Medicare trust fund or they have to be put toward the cost of the legislation to make it reduce the deficit by $132 billion over the next ten years. (That's assuming you buy into the shady accounting tricks used to score the bill.) Megan McArdle has a typically astute blog post up discussing the implications all of this. Megan even observes that as recently as Saturday, President Obama was trumpeting the bill's twin achievements of deficit reduction and strengthening Medicare. However, Megan didn't quote Obama in full -- fortunately The American Spectator's Phil Klein did. The entirety of Obama's remarks in the immediate aftermath of Senate De